Jacob deGrom, by the numbers

After much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands, it wasn’t even close. Jacob deGrom ran away with the Cy Young Award, notching 29 of 30 first place votes (thanks, San Diego) in Wednesday night’s election. It was really just a formality since early September when his competitors began to fade down the stretch while he remained stalwart, but anyone with concerns that good things can happen for the Mets is excused for being doubtful.

Here are some of the numbers that got deGrom where he is. We’ll get warmed up with some counting stats:

835: the number of batters deGrom faced
203: the number of batters to reach base
269: the number of batters to strike out
48: the number of runs that crossed the plate (41 earned)
10: the number of batters to hit a home run

Well, that sounds pretty good. But okay, let’s crank it up a notch with some advanced stats and see if it holds up:

2.09: the smallest Deserved Run Average for a starter since 2015
8.04: his WARP, the best mark in baseball by almost a half-win margin
1.99: runs allowed per 9 innings, fewest in baseball and over a half-run better than his runner-up, Max Scherzer
2.36: deGrom’s ERA for June, his worst month

That seems kind of incredible. But, okay, how did he handle pressure?

.170/.221/.256: cleanup hitters’ slashline against deGrom
.135/.195/.209: batters’ slashline against deGrom with men in scoring position
.110/.170/.139: batters’ slashline against deGrom in high-leverage situations
.120/.120/.160: batters’ slashline against deGrom after his hundredth pitch
.000/.000/.000: batters’ slashline against deGrom with the bases loaded

What more can you say? deGrom crushed batters with a quiet fierceness not seen since Clayton Kershaw’s peak. His historically poor luck battled with his historically good run prevention and deGrom emerged victorious. Watch out, National League East, there’s a new king in town.